With steely eyes you meet the unflinching gaze of your target. The fine hairs on the back of your neck stand up under the chill of his unsettling blue eyes, but you make no movement. Nothing that could give you away, nothing that could –inconceivable!- break your nerve. You are the tiger. You are liquid steel. You are pure diamond irony.
You are Rose Strider and you are about to attempt the most dangerous stunt of your life.
You launch into the flash step, halfway across the room in one step, leaping onto your brother's dresser with the next. Your fingers fumble as you pull out the deliciously ironic, Cal-sized sweater you've knitted in horrible clashing stripes of orange and pink, and quickly yank it over Lil' Cal's arms. You can hear your heart pounding in your ears, and you avoid Cal's gaze, which you swear turns to meet you. Doing up the buttons is agonizingly slow: why didn't you opt for the pull over?! To anyone else you would appear calm, even relaxed, but you know that act wouldn't fool Bro if he catches you. Finally, the puppet is finished, dapper in his fancy new attire. To slow! You leap off the dresser and flash step back toward the door.
You run into your brother and fall flat on your butt.
"Hello Rose."
"Hello Bro." Bro leans calmly against the doorframe and watches you from behind ironic pointed shades. Your own inscrutably stoic expression mirrors his. You stay sitting, like you intended to be here all along, just relaxing sprawled across your brothers bedroom floor with a single tell tale drop of nervous sweat rolling along your hairline unacknowledged.
"Nice flash stepping." Ironic. You have no talent for flash stepping and you both know it.
"Thanks." Equally ironic. And flippantly rude: you would never use a single word where two would do, thanks instead of thank you. Bro straightens, and you take a momentary break from analyzing every word you say or don't say for hidden meanings to watch him step around you toward the puppet. You hope he appreciates the amount of effort you put into this ironic passive aggressive gesture.
He does, of course. Bro misses nothing. His expression remains impassive, but you see him read the custom tag, which declares the sweater to be made of 200% L ve (and 8 percent wool). He nods with what might be approval and sets Cal back on his dresser, sweater and all. You take this as your cue to stand up.
As soon as you stand up you leap into the air, a razor sharp ninja star slicing the air under your converses, another almost shearing your perfectly gelled hair. You land in fighting stance and snatch your knitting needles out of your sylladex as you hit the ground. You know Bro doesn't approve of the knitting needles: because they are a rejection of your lifelong training with a katana, and because, you secretly believe, they are actually more ironic than his shitty sword, and he can't copy the idea without admitting defeat. A rare victory for you, infinitely worth the effort needed to train with knitting needles against a sword.
This fight isn't going to be in his bedroom. Bro flash steps past you and up the stairs, you trailing behind already. You arrive on the roof mere seconds after he does, but somehow he's nonetheless had the time to set up a lounge chair and crappy shade umbrella against the searing Texas sun. He lounges underneath, sipping a cool drink when you flash step onto the concrete.
"Afternoon, Sis." He greets you, flash stepping toward you almost casually. His katana gleams where it hangs languidly by his side. "You seen the new My Little Pony yet?"
You are deeply suspicious that he doesn't watch that quite as ironically as he claims. "I'm waiting until it's old." You inform him, dodging left when he leaps at you suddenly. His casual act hadn't fooled you for a second. "Currently I'm busy writing my multi-chapter analysis of why Dora the Explorer is secretly a metaphor for the horrific tentacled fiend which shall soon descend from the sky and devour us all." You counter with a low stab towards his feet which is dodged more easily than a falling feather.
"Should I assume that these tentacles could easily be used for some good filming?" Bro leaps into the air and gives a back flip which is obviously just for show, clipping you with one heel when you jump away from his kick to slowly. You barely manage to restrain from wincing.
"You're going to assume that no matter what I say." With a flick of your fingers, a piece of knitting is stretched between your knitting needles, a perfect slingshot, and Bro effortlessly leaps through the hail of pebbles you fling at him.
"True enough." He concedes as he flings each pebble back at you with his katana like a baseball player on forty shots of espresso. You are less adept at dodging and receive a few bruises from the hail of gravel. "Nothing that exists or that you claim exists can't be used for interesting purposes by a determined pornographer."
"This is all going in my notebook, you know." You plan to someday publish a comprehensive analysis of your brother's psyche, either as evidence in his trial or as a horror novel, depending on how things turn out. Bro nods and tosses a cherry bomb at you. It's way too slow: obviously a distraction. Or an ironic attempt to double trick you into thinking it's a distraction, so that he can actually get you with a gentle underhand toss of a small firework? While you're thinking about this the cherry bomb goes off beside your feet and you have to flash step out of the way instead of throwing it back.
"Nice moves." Bro says. You grumble at your brother's comment. One bad move and you're back to ironic condescension again. You leap at him again, and are straight-armed back out of his way. You land in front of him back in ready position.
Deedle Deedle Deedle.
That's the garishly ironic tone of your cell phone, a text message from one of your friends. While you're glancing down at the pink phone clipped to the waistline of your brown denim miniskirt, you receive an unceremonious boot to the head that sends you soaring across the roof, skidding along the sun-baked concrete on your back. By the time you reach the edge you've decided to give up for the moment, so instead of leaping up you roll to your feet and vault the pathetic "safety" rail someone installed along the edge of the roof some years back, when they first saw you as a toddler wandering around up here. You hear Bro's huff of annoyance when you abscond, but you've already kicked open your window and landed casually on your bedroom floor. You flick open your phone.
gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering tentacleTherepist [TT].
GG: hey rose!
GG: rose!
GG: stop switching the marshmallows in the cereals and answer me for once
GG: that's not even ironic
GG: its just weird
GG: rose strider! where are you?
You roll your eyes at your best friend's impatience and answer Jade Egbert, already.